Dude, where’s my amnesty?

It’s hard to understand where the tsunami of young illegal aliens slamming into Texas got the idea that free citizenship and benefits would be waiting for them. Why, just yesterday, President Obama stressed the importance of American border security and the rule of law, noting that every nation is obliged to respect American territorial integrity, and the titanic mega-government he presides over has a sacred obligation to defend our employment and social-welfare systems.

Just kidding! Actually, Obama invited young illegal aliens to a White House ceremony, honoring “success stories” from the President’s unilateral amnesty grant, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which just reached its second anniversary. Anyone who thinks this sort of thing doesn’t inspire fresh waves of illegal migration is out of their minds. Anyone who doesn’t think Obama is well aware of that, and wants the human waves to come rolling in, is far too credulous. This is “transforming America” on steroids.

Not everyone was wild about that White House event, according to Fox News:

A spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, though, told Fox News Tuesday that celebrating illegal immigrants in this way minimizes the sacrifices Border Patrol agents have made to keep the border secure.

“Today’s event at the White House is a real slap in the [face] to Border Patrol agents who risk their lives every day to protect this country from drug smugglers, cartels and illegal aliens who are attempting to break the laws of the United States,” Shawn Moran, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, said.

Outrage has swirled around the Obama administration’s immigration policies in recent weeks, amid a wave of unaccompanied children crossing illegally into the U.S. that lawmakers and administration officials have called a “humanitarian crisis.”

Federal authorities say their budgets to police the borders have been strained as illegal immigrants – mostly women and children – from Central America cross the border. Federal officials have lately been transporting hundreds from overburdened facilities in Texas to Arizona and other states.

How much does it cost to relocate hundreds of people to different states? How much more would it cost to transport them back to their legal country of origin?

The co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots said the Obama administration’s choice to honor illegal immigrants in this fashion is “beyond comprehension” when dealing with such a surge.

“At a time when we already have an uncontrollable flood of people illegally entering the United States, President Obama’s decision to hold a White House ceremony honoring illegal immigrants is going to make a bad situation worse,” Jenny Beth Martin said.

I’m not sure why Ms. Martin thinks that’s “beyond comprehension.” The inbound aliens certainly seem to comprehend the message being sent to them. Byron York at the Washington Examinertook a look at the White House’s frantic efforts to deny that DACA and the immigration-reform debate were prompting Central American parents to catapult their kids at the U.S. border, and found the Administration’s narrative was “falling apart” – something he thinks would be a much bigger story at the moment, if not for events like the Iraq crisis dominating the headlines.

Recent days have been filled with anecdotal reports, from local news outlets in Central America to major American newspapers, citing immigrants who say they came because they believe U.S. law has been changed to allow them to stay. And now comes word that Border Patrol agents in the most heavily-trafficked area of the surge, the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas, recently questioned 230 illegal immigrants about why they came. The results showed overwhelmingly that the immigrants, including those classified as UACs, or unaccompanied children, were motivated by the belief that they would be allowed to stay in the United States — and not by conditions in their homelands.

So while Democrats sneer that criticism of Obama’s immigration policy is just partisan Republican bellyaching, Border Patrol agents are actually talking to the new arrivals, and fully ninety-five percent of them are saying “Dude, where’s my amnesty?” York quotes from the Border Patrol report:

The main reason the subjects chose this particular time to migrate to the United States was to take advantage of the “new” U.S. “law” that grants a “free pass” or permit (referred to as “permisos”) being issued by the U.S. government to female adult OTMs traveling with minors and to UACs. (Comments: The “permisos” are the Notice to Appear documents issued to undocumented aliens, when they are released on their own recognizance pending a hearing before an immigration judge.) The information is apparently common knowledge in Central America and is spread by word of mouth, and international and local media. A high percentage of the subjects interviewed stated their family members in the U.S. urged them to travel immediately, because the United States government was only issuing immigration “permisos” until the end of June 2014…The issue of “permisos” was the main reason provided by 95% of the interviewed subjects.

Furthermore, these interviews suggest the new wave of illegals is drawn by messages from previous illegal immigrants, who are writing home to encourage friends and family to join them across the U.S. Border. Literally all of the people interviewed by the Border Patrol said they already knew someone living in the United States, frequently an undocumented alien who has been living in the United States for a long period of time.

How do Democrats respond to these inconvenient facts? By saying we need even looser immigration laws and more amnesty, of course. If you just legalize everyone, then there won’t be any illegal aliens. Problem solved, Cloward-Piven style: create a crisis, then demand your policy preferences as the solution.

As some Democrats on the committee had already suggested, [Homeland Security Secretary Jeh] Johnson told Cornyn that, if there, in fact, are misperceptions about U.S. law among illegal immigrants, the way to clarify the situation is to pass comprehensive immigration reform. “If comprehensive immigration reform is passed, the uncertainty that may be existing in people’s minds about our law gets resolved,” Johnson said.

Others, including the White House spokesman, have made the same point in what has become the administration’s fallback position: If you don’t like what is happening at the border, pass comprehensive immigration reform. It is essentially a concession that yes, the young illegal immigrants flooding across the border are coming because they’ve heard that Obama administration policies will allow them to stay. But it’s also a sign that the White House has no intention to do much about the problem.

If the American government doesn’t respect its own border, no one else will respect it, either. A spokesperson for the Mexican embassy patiently spelled it out for protesters demanding the release of U.S. Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, currently rotting in a Mexican jail because of course the Obamabots didn’t mean a word of their blather about “bringing every American home” when they were trying to justify releasing five Taliban honchos. From CNS News:

“When a Mexican, or any other citizen, crosses a border, let’s say illegally, they are not committing a crime. They are doing it illegally, but they are not committing a crime. No, they are not. Check your law,” Public Affairs Minister Ariel Moutsatos-Morales says.

Don’t get mad at Minister Moutsatos-Morales. How can you possibly blame him for drawing that conclusion, or castigate him for speaking the plain truth that your own bipartisan amnesty caucus won’t give you? I’ve made the same point before: if the violators of U.S. immigration law are not treated as criminals – and they most certainly are not, with infrequent exceptions – then it’s not a “law.”

The wave of young illegals coming in search of their amnesty isn’t confined to the border states, either. The New York Timesnoted that the “surge in child migrants” has reached zip codes visible from its editorial offices, “overwhelming” everyone from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to private advocacy groups:

While the government’s response has been largely focused on the Southwest, the surge of child migrants is quickly becoming a crisis around the country. The fallout is being felt most acutely in places with large immigrant populations, like New York, where newly arrived children and their relatives are flooding community groups, seeking help in fighting deportation orders, getting health care, dealing with the psychological traumas of migration, managing the challenges of family reunification and enrolling in school.

“It’s almost like a refugee crisis,” said Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group.

Federal officials will not reveal how many children they are holding, how many are being released or where they are being sent. But in the New York region, immigrant advocacy organizations say they have seen a stunning rise in the number of unaccompanied minors seeking help in the past several months.

“All of a sudden it went from a trickle to more like a river,” said Anne Pilsbury, director of Central American Legal Assistance in Brooklyn.

The Times, of course, underplays the obvious truth uncovered by those Border Patrol agents, putting all the secondary reasons for the migrant wave first, and mentioning the “perceived change in American policy that would favor child immigrants” as an afterthought, vigorously disputed by the Administration. Ideological blinders have rarely been so thick.

Most of the children who have been detained at the southwest border have been channeled into deportation proceedings and, within several days, handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which cares for them until they can be released to relatives or legal guardians in the United States.

Well, then it’s not a “deportation proceeding,” is it? That’s all the next wave of migrants surging out of Central America needs to hear. All this talk about the fine print on what the current badly-enforced laws and dubious executive orders say is missing the point; the sense of where “comprehensive immigration reform” is heading serves as an even more powerful magnet. There’s no reason whatsoever to expect a tightening of American law, is there? And the larger the illegal population grows, the more eagerly our Ruling Class will serve and celebrate them.

The new arrivals aren’t all unaccompanied minor children, either. Some of these teenagers are known members of violent gangs, including the notorious MS-13. They’re actually covered in gang tattoos… and border patrol officers say they must be treated like any other “child.”

The direct physical security of the border is an important topic, even if we all know it’s slipped into the “comprehensive immigration reform” debate as a sedative to make us swallow amnesty – no plans for enhanced border protection in two, five, or ten years will ever materialize, and no “triggers” will ever halt or roll back the amnesty process once it has begun. But even if we built hundred-foot walls and infallible detection systems along the entire border, it would only count for so much, measured against the government’s dereliction of duty in enforcing the law for those who get in. The incentives bringing people here are as important as the physical barriers they face when they arrive.

Because let’s be blunt: if we build that hundred-foot wall, and a massive camp of starving children appears beneath it, we’re going to open the gates.

Update: Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott said on Twitter this afternoon, “Be assured: Texas will step up to secure our border. We are working on plans around the clock.”

Good luck, Mr. Abbott, because I’m sure the Obama Administration is working around the clock on plans to stop you. We’ve seen what happens when the feds see states taking immigration issues into their own hands.